New Hitec Chargers - Power Peak E7 and X2 High Power

Hitec has been releasing battery chargers fast and furious lately giving you more choices and options than ever before. The two latest models to come across our desk is the Power Peak E7 and the X2 High Power.

More Charger Choices from Hitec

Hitec has been releasing battery chargers fast and furious lately giving you more choices and options than ever before. The two latest models to come across our desk is the Power Peak E7 and the X2 High Power. Check out the info below for more details and specs.

Hitec Power Peak E7 Charger

The E7 is a powerful 200 watt single port battery charger that can take care of all chemistry types and pump out up to 20A for large packs. It's an AC/DC charger making it convenient to use at home or at the field. The screen is easy to read and it has some cool extras like the BID (Battery Identification) system and USB ports on the front for keeping your mobile devices topped off.

Hitec X2 High Power Multi-Function Charger

The X2 is great for when you have lots of batteries to charge. It's also AC/DC and it features dual charging ports and you can distribute its 250 watt power to each port based on what you need for different batteries, which is really neat. There are 10 different charge/discharge profiles and this model has a really cool Voice Guide function when setting up the charger making it easy to learn and use.

Only large 2S packs though. 200W means just 10V when the charge current is 20A.

Here's a breakdown (based on nominal cell voltage):

1S- 20 amp
2S- 20 amp
3S- 18 amp
4S- 13.5 amp
5S- 10.8 amp
6S- 9 amp

It is essentially a single port version of our D7 charger, there was a need for a smaller charger that could still put out the power to charge large packs. My 6S 5000 packs I could charge in a little under 40 minutes. The D7 an E7 are manufactured by Multiplex.

Quote:

Originally Posted by teckbot

What is the expected street price on the X2 High?

X2 HP: $144.99

A neat feature not mentioned is when operating the X2 HP on AC power, the DC port serves as a DC power supply- power can be distributed to the DC port, anywhere from 10-150W.

For 3S that would be 3 x 3.7 = 11.1V, but in order to push 18 amps into the pack the charger would have to supply a much higher voltage than that (at 11.1V no current would flow at all). This would mean reducing the current, because of the 200W limit.

So I don't think those figures are achievable (apart from 1S and possibly 2S)?

Images

Watts = Amps x volts so taking the 200 and dividing it by the voltage of the pack will be what the maximum amperage the charger can charge at (approximately.) I.E: 200w/11.1v (3S Pack) = 18A.

You can set the charger for 20A and it will just do what it can do based on Ohms law. Not sure what the confusion is here?

Mike.

Hi Mike, the confusion is the statement above that 200W will get you 18A of charge current on a 3S pack.

In order to get current to flow, the charger must apply a higher voltage than the pack voltage. If a 3S pack is at 11.1V and the charger applies 11.1V then zero amps (not 18A) will be the result. Like you say, Ohm's law.

To push 18A into an 11.1V pack requires a much higher voltage from the charger. When the output power in watts is limited then increasing the voltage means dropping the amps.

Here's one of my chargers putting just 9A into a 3S pack - note that 12.6V is required to do this. This is at the start of the charge (4 minutes in, with 650 mAh into an 8000 mAh pack). As the charge progresses the pack voltage rises and the voltage the charger must supply to maintain the charge current will increase.

To achieve 18A rather than 9A it's clear that significantly more than 12.6V would be required from the charger. But the E7 can only output 200W, and 18A x 12.6V would already be 226W ...